VOTA – Self-Titled

When it comes to the acronym you have to be extremely careful in its use.  According to dictionary.com an acronym is “a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words”.  So you see, the reader can easily decide that they want to use your acronym as their own.  For example, ETA could mean Easy To Access, LOL could mean Live Our Lives, or VOTA could mean Very Open To Anything.  I hope you catch my drift.

The band VOTA has experienced problems when trying to find a name.  They experimented with Casting Pearls, but failed to make that name stick due to confusion with a group you may have heard of; Casting Crowns.  So they have finally found a name and it happens to be an acronym for Vibration Open Test Assembly.  I try to search for words to relate that to the music, the sound, or the band and I find it extremely difficult.  This points to the outcome of their new self-titled album as a whole.  This CD, titled simply VOTA, does not give me any reason to listen more than once or twice.  I have questions when I listen,  like “are connections in the music industry all it takes to get signed to a major label?”, or “why do musicians make music just to have that music get lost in the smorgasbord of similar bands?”  When I try to categorize the music made by VOTA  it is very easy because there are close to thirty other bands like it in the Christian market.  If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain.  The sound has a distinct rock ‘n’ roll sound and consists of alot of guitar chords being strummed - Newsboys style, bass guitar being picked - Jeremy Camp style, and drums that rock - TobyMac style.  I’m not saying that VOTA has copied the bands I have listed, but I’m sure if you played both back-to-back the sound would be hard to differentiate.  The CD does contain alot of “radio-friendly” hits (I use the term loosely), but that is where I have a problem, I don’t usually like the “radio-friendly” hit.  The band has not taken any risks with the music, therefore, VOTA gets lost with the score of similar sounding bands that have tried this before.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to end the review here because these words do not contain a hint of this CD being good.  That being said, it is not hard to find positives here.  VOTA is full of catchy guitar chords, amazingly positive lyrics, great radio playability, and it serves as a great alternative to what secular radio presents in Tom Cochrane or Bryan Adams.  At least there are some positives to VOTA, much like there are positives to using an acronym.  TTYL.

3/10

— Luke —

NHL 09 Review

What is the best way to capture the intensity of the best sport in the world?  Is there a gaming system that will translate the action from a cold hockey rink to a TV set?  Can a video game make the NHL more interactive or more addicting?  And most importantly, will a company step up and make a video game that my dad can finally play?

Tough questions to answer in a world full of sports video games, but I believe that EA Sports has come very close.  NHL 09 is the newest title in EA’s yearly hockey series for the XBOX 360.  Graphically this game is the best yet and runs very smoothly on Microsoft’s system.  Let’s start with the hitting; it is much more realistic and believable in comparison to last years installment, which really lacked that smooth “run the player through the glass” feeling.  This year the energy and fluidity of the game have been pushed to a whole new level.  You believe the game, you feel the game.  The menus are great and the ability to tweak almost every gameplay setting is also a good feature. A gameplay editor allows you to customize any portion of your experience, making the game more personal and making you the next Colin Campbell.  In addition EA has kept the “Skill Stick”, making the controls amazingly simplified and a million times more enjoyable than the ”button-mashing” of old.  Even though the controls are brilliant and the gameplay is much more realistic, I still don’t think my dad could play this game, but that is not EA’s fault.  He’s just too old to play video games.

This game comes close to getting high marks but still falls short.  There are a few annoyances in the game that hinder its playability.  The camera angles available are not the best, there are some glitches in the realism of player deeks, the fighting could be much better, and the physics of certain shots sometimes make the instant replay feature needed so you know the answer to, ”how did I get that shot off?”  Xbox will hopefully release a game patch to solve some of these things, but if EA Sports is taking note and read Inspired Magazine, they will know what to change for NHL 10.

7.5/10

— Luke —

Lecrae – Rebel

Being counter-cultural these days is extremely hard.  Everything around you says “do things this way” or “if you have this item you need nothing else”.  The Bible calls all christians to something different, to be counter-cultural.  What if we lived a lifestyle unashamed of Jesus Christ and no longer conformed to the patterns of the world.  Or in this case, the culture.  We would then line up with the teachings of the Bible and be better equipped to live a life that is set apart, unique.  We will also find our music taste may change and we will find ourselves listening to more hip-hop.

A music review for Rebel by Lecrae; written by a white kid from Saskatoon, SK, Canada, nothing is more counter-cultural.  For some reason there seems to be a theme running through these words, but bear with me.  When I listen to hip-hop I usually lean towards East-Coast stylings, so it’s really interesting that I find myself being “all about” a West-Coast album.  There is something really satisfying when “truth” and “honesty” are woven into lyrics, no matter what style of music it is.  Rebel starts, like most hip-hop albums, with an intro track.  But this intro track is arguably the best lyrical track on the CD, and introduces themes of transformation, rebellion, servanthood, and anticonformation.  The effective use of sampling a sermon containing these themes makes this one of the best intros I’ve ever heard in hip-hop.  Track 2 is highlighted by Lecrae’s honest lyric “…show the world that Christ is Divine/ that’s why it’s Christ in my rhymes/ That’s why it’s Christ all the time/see my whole world is built around him He’s the life in my lines”.  God has blessed Lecrae with an amazing talent to make these lines flow smoothly, suited perfectly to the genre.  Track 5 is even more honest when we hear an argument between Lecrae and sin in the lyric, “Lets go smoke a Kool or sumthin/Talk and sip a brew or sumthin/Naw man I aint trusting you/Aint nothing but lust in you/Thanks be to God I obeyed the teaching I was entrusted to”.  The use of biblical language abounds on the CD.  Track 14, titled “The Bride”, portrays the roal or goal of the church in modern hip-hop language that communicates the Bible to the culture, “Yeah she may look gritty/When her man come back she gone look so pretty – She the Church/You might see her acting crazy, be patient with her tho cause she still God’s baby – She the Church”.  Challenging.

Musically, Rebel is distinctly West-Coast.  You hear it in the pounding bass, catchy R & B choruses, and smooth raps.  Even through the cover, you can tell that Rebel will sound very “thug”.  As you listen more to the CD you can immediately compare Lecrae to 50 Cent, Cam’ron, or even Tupac.  Christian comparisons may include any of the Cross Movement dudes or any of Lecrae’s label mates; Trip Lee, Tedashii, and Sho Baraka.  Production and listenability are very strong on Rebel, you can listen to the CD repetitively and never get sick of it or be dissapointed with the quality.  Isn’t that what good music is, freshness and uniqueness?

The summation of this review is served up good through the last line of the album, “Go, go, go (run with those beautiful feet)/Go, go, go
You hold the truth that saves so run and shout it to the world/They can’t believe in something they ain’t never heard/Go, go, go and run with those beautiful feet”.  Is that counter-cultural?  Let this serve as a challenge to all of us, let’s go, let’s be a Rebel.

9/10

—Luke—